


Gilead, East of the Jordan

by middlemarch



Series: Shadow Season 2 [1]
Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, Angst, Doctors & Physicians, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Letters, Romance, Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-26
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-19 23:57:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9466409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: Would they ever get there?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> These are a series of drabbles/ficlets designed to address what I felt were deficits and flaws in the first episode of Season 2, so spoiler-alert! Sometimes, it's just an embroidery and sometimes, I have re-worked the cloth. The title is from the episode title "Balm in Gilead." Gilead is from two Hebrew words and means "eternal happiness."

“I’ll go write to his wife,” she’d said and Jed had nodded, agreeing while he considered her, a look in his eyes that said he did not entirely understand how she felt but wanted to. It was a regular task of hers but this letter would be like the first she’d ever written, the one to the boy’s mother where she had searched herself to find a way to render the truth less painful, to offer comfort where she suspected there could be none. She had known a grief like that and carried it with her yet, some days in her hands as they mended a shirt, a shroud, others in her belly, a stone, the baby she hadn’t borne him, pulling at her heels, around her shoulders like a heavy mantle, the nun’s habit, her hair unbound and waiting to be brushed at night, too much her own to startle her with its weight. Did Jed know any of that? He had touched the tears on her face and she’d taken his hand in her own but she hadn’t left the dying man and she had forfeited her chance to see Lincoln as anything more than a somber figure through the curtain’s veil. 

The daguerreotype of Gustav was before her as she wrote and she imagined it was herself she addressed, describing an unwavering devotion, the final thoughts of a cherished wife that she could never be sure had belonged to her. What she wrote was the truth but the woman, Mrs. Starks or newly Mrs. Howard, prepared and eager to be another man’s wife, she couldn’t care for Philip’s suffering and she wouldn’t wonder if Mary lied when she wrote of his death, if he had wept and moaned, cried in fear, murmured her name, the many endearments a man might have for his beloved—darling, pet, angel, treasure. Had Gustav breathed _Liebchen_ at the last or had he already been beyond any remembrance of her, entranced by another sphere? He could become so absorbed in his work, those grey eyes abstracted; had the ineffable called to the scholar within his soul with a primacy any affection for her could not match? 

It could not be so with Jedediah, she had a sudden conviction; she had felt his hand upon her gentle and she recalled how it had held her tightly and she knew whomever he loved would occupy him, push aside other concerns, if a departure was imminent and incontrovertible. He would leave with his lover’s name upon his lips, a farewell that was a benediction and a vow. She felt his gaze upon her still, a fine and tender concern she had shied away from even as her heart beat, beat within her breast for the warmth of it. It seemed Gustav retreated even further from her in his silver frame and the dark eyes she saw within her mind were no longer her husband’s. She wanted another woman’s husband and she could not deny it. She could not approve it nor respect completely the woman she was but she could at least admit it to herself, as she lifted the pen which had finished the letter without her attention, her own signature, _Baroness Mary von Olnhausen_ , foreign again, Gustav’s _Mareike_ distant, Jed’s Mary, his Maryland vowels languorous, the woman she woke to become more every dawn.


	2. “I’m not certain that’s always been so”

It was a strange place for a declaration, a strange declaration, oblique and subdued, as unromantic as he could have imagined, ill-advised in nearly every way and yet irresistible, as she was herself, however homely her calico blouse and drab skirt; she was radiant and he had not known dark eyes could hold so much light in them. She was nearly always so decorous now, the impetuous Baroness who’d once leapt into danger at his side a memory, but not tonight. Tonight, she was fey and vivacious with it—the stillness she assumed when he spoke like a veil; he felt the tension in her when he took up her hand. Mary had calluses on her palm, a woman’s hand he’d never known, one that had not worn a glove for months, that was bare of any ring, the nails cut to the quick. He imagined pressing it to his lips, first the back like a gallant courtier, then at the center of her palm, the caress of the curve at the base of her thumb against his cheek. He imagined but she acted, stepping just that much nearer that she might reach his mouth with her own, as sure as he was still uncertain. He thought she had the softest mouth of any woman he’d ever kissed, the sweetest, and then he could hardly think at all to feel her warmth, such tender, urgent desire as she came to him again and again, like a dream he had dreamt so many nights but none as wonderful as this reality. 

Mary made a low sound in her throat like a question at his slow reaction and he was struck by it as much as by the taste of her, the stunning awareness of her ardent nature, the understanding that she wanted him and no other but that she was not overwhelmed as he was; she could still notice his reaction and query his diffidence. He didn’t want her to wonder, he didn’t want her to stop and he wanted to kiss her, not merely be kissed, to take her face in his hands and stroke the delicate skin of her cheekbones; he wanted to pull her close to him and hold her against him, to feel the lovely shape of her. He wanted to confess every wish he’d ever made about her and how she was proving that his wishes were like the bud and she the rose in full, many-petalled bloom. He wanted her to laugh at him and then kiss him again. He wanted to make her sigh into his mouth and to breathe her in. He felt her hand on his shoulder. The knowledge that she needed him and needing him, sought his strength, was intoxication and sustenance, wine and bread. As he began to relax into her caresses, she pulled back and lifted her eyes to him. Before, they had been starry and confiding and he’d loved them; now, there was a shadow, the way the moon held the darkness to her as she shed her gentle light, and he loved her, knowing she was trying to decide if she regretted what she had done. If she knew more, that she had not transgressed so greatly when the bonds that held him were every day closer to being cut, would she struggle so? What else could he say, which of the words he had put aside could he tell her with the unadorned honesty she drew from him?

She opened her mouth to speak but he hurried first, “Mary, there is something I need to-”

“Good night,” she said and he thought, _if she knew, if only she knew_ and began again but she took his hand in her own and brought it to where her heart beat, the glancing softness of her breast against his knuckles, the curve of her unbearably erotic. The purity of her gesture contained all his lust. She repeated, “Good night” and he knew what she meant and what she was asking of him. He wanted to give her everything, he could certainly start with this,

“Good night.”


	3. “It became apparent that help was needed”

He’d tried to say something after she came in. There had been a lilt in her tone that made hope flare within him as he regarded her; he had worried over how she would be the next time they were alone together, if she would think better of their embrace and decide to give up the hundred little familiarities she’d allowed herself with him. Frankly, he had wondered the next morning if it had been a fever-dream, a phantasy the like of which he hadn’t had since he’d given up the needle, Mary reaching for him, the unexpected contrast of her sweet hunger and the hand she’d laid against his cheek, his shoulder, a wifely affection he hadn’t realized he could miss. Eliza had always given him such caresses perfunctorily, fulfilling her duty and only that, but Mary’s touch had been deliberately affectionate and he thought she could more easily accept the smaller disgrace of his divorce than the larger transgression of adultery. She stood across from him in the cool light of day and he determined to tell her what she hadn’t let him that night.

“About the other evening, when we were outside your room, I feel I must tell you,” he began and paused, searching for the correct way, the best way to say it when there was a knock on the door that startled them both. Mary blinked, a little owlishly, and he would have chuckled to see it except that they must be interrupted. It was Samuel and a freedwoman in a stylish bonnet and dress, a duo he would have been curious about if they had not scotched his plans.

“Pardon, Dr. Foster. This lady asked to see Miss Phinney,” Samuel explained. Now, Jed was bemused, to think Samuel had known to bring the stranger to his office in order to find Mary. It could not surprise him that a man as astute as Samuel, as fond of Mary as Samuel was, would have recognized the attachment between them for all that it was and even what it might be.

“I’m Miss Phinney,” Mary replied, all pleasant civility. She wasn’t, she was the Baroness von Olnhausen but she had stopped answering to it or referring to herself that way and when there was time, he meant to ask why. When there was time, he meant to do so many things…

“I’m Charlotte Jenkins of the New England Freedman’s Society.” 

Jed considered this and how it had Mary’s fine hand all over it, as her clinic had, the kitchen she’d installed during Bullen’s tenure; she did not ask for permission if she suspected it would not be granted. Had she extended that assumption to him—as Executive Officer? As a man? When she kissed him, had she thought he would push her away?

“Miss Jenkins, they said you were coming but they didn’t say when. It’s wonderful to meet you,” Mary cried, her delight evident. He thought she had nearly clapped her hands in excitement and he had a sudden image of her as a young girl, when she had not considered her generous smiles at all. It was becoming clear that Mary ran another Mansion House and while she was privy to the one he led, he had very little, nearly nothing to do with her own construction. Now, Miss Jenkins was explaining what Mary had spent hours on, detailed letters she wrote late into the night, the work of scrubbing down another box-room, the afternoons he glimpsed her returning from what he now understood had been her own rounds, made among the contraband, the laundresses and the nameless boys who ran the dusty streets. It would have only exasperated him once but now he saw how boundless her good nature was and how good, even if it was likely to cause him no end of trouble. He tilted his head as if to inquire and she regarded him keenly as she answered.

“I described for them what is happening here,” she said simply. 

Mary hadn’t come to him though, not to tell and not to ask and he had no one to blame for that except himself. He knew if she had asked him, had told him her concerns, he would have pushed them aside, kindly he hoped, but without paying them much mind. There was a hospital full of sick men and boys to try and keep from death, that was his primarcy responsibility. But beyond that, there was the effort it took for him to withstand the needle’s siren call, the struggles he’d had over the divorce Eliza wanted, the pained letters he wrote to her, to the attorney, the letters he wrote to Ezra and his mother that went unanswered. He would have been unwilling to help and ashamed of it, so he would have snapped and quipped, snarled at her, and that was what she had known and why she had not bothered.

“It became apparent that help was needed,” Charlotte interjected firmly before Mary’s words could linger among them any longer. 

Mary had spoken to him thus, once, but she had modulated her tone in the weeks that followed and he had assumed it was because she had been chastened and learned he had been right when he told her he knew more than she did or because she no longer felt the need to challenge him, having nursed him through the withdrawal, had her taste of power over him. He had always regarded her in relation to himself though and never as she must have done, an independent soul, bounded only by her own morality and so he had not imagined this moment, when he began to understand just who it was he loved.


	4. “But there are no oranges”

“Ma’am, you was lookin’ for oranges? Earlier this week?” 

The man behind the counter had been able to give her so little of what Charlotte had asked for and Mary had been thinking of how she would tell the other woman that for those who needed so much, there were only the few pots and flasks, the basket nearly empty. Charlotte had asked for hardly anything since she arrived. Mary knew Jed would not agree, even though he’d given his permission for Charlotte to begin her work, but it was not worth arguing over. She had tried to give to the freedwoman what she herself had never been offered—the hospitality of a private room, fresh water and linen, the restfulness of polite conversation among like-minded folk, but Charlotte had refused, eager to join Samuel in erecting the quarantine tent, triaging the ill, the starving, the heartsick and those who needed only a prayer before they went to Beulah. Mary had wished to walk beside Charlotte into the yard but she could not shirk her own regular responsibilities within Mansion House and so she had promised to come as soon as she was able. To be able to help her, as she had never been allowed to help Anne Hastings or any of the nuns, sisters united in a common cause, was a rare joy and she had been eager to procure the ointments and tinctures Charlotte listed. She had flown to her room to retrieve a bonnet and her shawl, the basket she used when she infrequently visited the mercantile and apothecary’s shop to supplement Mansion House’s spare pharmacopeia. She had something, more than the contraband had had before, but not near enough and yet, here was the shopkeeper speaking again when she had not expected to be offered anything.

“Yes, but there were none. Not here, not anywhere in all Alexandria,” she replied. She had hoped on that errand but not greatly, there were so many shortages and for such a luxury, it was not a surprise.

“I got a few now. You still want ‘em? They’re mighty dear,” the man said gruffly.

“Yes, I would,” she said, knowing she must not ask how or when he’d had acquired the fruit. She took coins from her reticule, her own money, and exchanged them for two somewhat wizened specimens, the peel leathery and puckered but still plump enough to be juicy within. 

She brought Miss Jenkins what she’d acquired, imaging the letter she must write to Boston before she slept, begging them to send what couldn’t be gotten; the freedwoman had only murmured, “Loaves and fishes, loaves and fishes,” and nodded—an acknowledgement and a sort of forgiveness for the embarrassment she perceived in Mary’s gaze. And then, she’d gone to see the boy who’d burnt with fever in the forenoon and hoped the oranges would prove some consolation. She had sent a telegram to his mother some days ago but there had been no response and now it seemed he must die without her by his side.

When she put the section of the peeled orange in the mouth of the fevered boy, she thought he would choke on it; his delirium had only worsened but not enough to save him from the misery of the pain that racked him. She stroked his cheek to prompt him to open his mouth and took the fruit from his teeth where they’d clenched in a rigor. His eyes were half-closed and she thought it could not be long now.

“Mother! You came, you’re here,” he cried and she did what she’d learned was right, brushed back the lock of hair from his forehead, laid a hand against his drawn, unshaven cheek, and hummed a little,

“Here I am, Mother’s here, Johnny,” as she broke a segment of orange and let the juice drip into his mouth. Some last bit of vitality took hold and he licked his lips, catching her sticky fingers, and then he sighed and made a sudden movement, managing to sit up enough to lay his head against her breast, stretching a hand in a final impulse to her neck, coughing harshly before the breath left him and she held another dead boy she hadn’t saved. It had not gotten easier, she had simply run out of tears and sat with him in her arms a moment, his head limp against her, his hand heavy where it had fallen to her shoulder. She closed her eyes and wished for a prayer but none came. None came.


	5. “Because you weren’t looking”

“You are angry about something other than the quarantine,” Jed exclaimed and she felt a living rage fall over her like a bridal veil, from her crown to her feet in their worn slippers. He had not expected anything other than a pleasant conversation of commiseration or perhaps more of the oblique love-making he favored when she came in but she thought of what Samuel said matter-of-factly in the courtyard, “’cause nobody was lookin, Nurse Mary’” and she could not resist goading Jed to explain himself, his reaction to Miss Jenkins, his awareness of the people dying outside the hospital’s walls whom he treated as though they were in the far Orient. He had made a gentleman’s excuses, “a reasoned medical approach,” unseemly choices,” how he was responsible to the men first, “in here, not among them,” the people he did not, could not consider as she did, not and treat them so. She had asked him, gently, often, to join her in the camp but he had refused and she had not been able to convince him otherwise. And now, she had seen through Charlotte’s eyes how desperate the conditions were. How great the need was, the children with big eyes used to long hunger, the woman with child who was covered in pox, the grown men who waited patiently for scraps of food, their backs laced with scars! To be told his assumption about her intensity, that all she cared about was their embrace, her own, small personal regrets and dreams, incensed her.

“How dare you, Jedediah? How dare you tell me that my convictions are nothing, that all I care about are my own personal affections?” she spat out. His eyes narrowed and she thought he was assessing her anew, unfamiliar with her anger, perhaps any woman’s honest, righteous anger.

“We are seeking a divorce, Eliza and I, you must know that, Mary,” he said, seeming to ignore her response and continue to assuage the ire he believed was due only to the situation they found themselves in, lovers forbidden by law and the church but whose hearts could not be bound by convention.

“I mustn’t,” she snapped. Her hands were fists at her side, eager to strike at something, something else he would not have believed of her. Whatever hint of a smile he had worn passed from his face and she thought _I did that_.

“You said I hide, I say one thing and mean another—we are both liars then, if you say you mustn’t know, that you don’t care,” Jed said evenly, then ran a hand through his hair, a gesture familiar to her from long days and nights of working together, the relieved fatgiue she seen watching him save this boy, how all his grief when the boy died was compressed into that articulated wrist, the way he pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose for a moment. How could he understand so much and so little?

“‘Care?’ Do you know, how can I bear it, to care, to _love_ a man so deeply whom I cannot respect?” she cried, any attempt to subdue her mingled anguish and tenderness, her contempt, a failure. He drew from her words she would never have imagined she could say, could mean and every one the truth, despite his accusation that she lied. She was breathless with her fury and a simultaneous eagerness to forget all his faults and allow herself to wallow in her affection which she despised as it enticed her, a secret, twining understanding that she judged him too harshly perhaps, expected a paragon when he had made no pretense at that. Even now, she would have thought he would lash out in response and she braced herself for his next revelation about herself but he was silent. The space between them was empty, vast, tangible, waiting to be breached.

“I don’t know, Mary,” he said simply. “I have only been married to a woman I neither respected nor loved. And I love only a woman for whom I have the greatest respect, despite what she, what you think of me,” he added, entirely the Jedediah she was in love with, intelligent and thoughtful and willing to agree with her no matter what it cost him. She could not decide if she should trust him, the doubt like a miasma that sickened her.

“You, that night, you beguiled me,” she said and it sounded weak to her, an girlish excuse even more inadequate than those he had given her for refusing to treat, to see the contraband, to recognize their humanity. 

She had known what he thought about the fugitive slaves since those first days after she’d arrived and she had asked him but not demanded. She had allowed him to remain unchallenged until now. She had fallen in love with Jedediah fully aware of his position, his frailties and deficiencies as obvious as his strengths and talents, and now when he told her what she should have wanted to know, that he loved her and respected her, that he would soon be free to marry again, she could not face it. She did not know if she ought to love him and she wasn’t sure if he could be always the man he was now, and so she hid and avoided as she had charged him. She saw his expression change as he understood how she suffered and how she would make him suffer too. She spoke as if it were a vow, a promise, as if she could force her heart to be other than it was, to make a lie the truth.

“I will not be beguiled anymore.”


	6. “Your mama’s in a better place”

The child, a little girl, lay beside her mother and looked at them both with listless eyes. Mary had thought she had faced every calamity, every loss that could come to a person but she realized she had been wrong about this, as she had been wrong about so many things. She no longer had the bright assurance that she would learn how to manage such a situation, as she’d had when she arrived at Mansion House and told Matron how she meant to observe and get her bearings before instituting changes for the hospital’s betterment. The child clung to the body of her mother, which was not reduced by death but instead had become a sort of monolith, an anchorage, an insurmountable barrier between the child and the brutal world that awaited her. How could they have failed to save her? There was only one consolation and that was Charlotte Jenkins who had stood beside Mary but now knelt near the child, coaxing from her a her name “Lula” and her mother’s, “Mattie,” before she said softly,

“Your mama’s in a better place.”

Charlotte seemed to know what to do and say and Mary could only thank God for that, for her serene presence that recognized every sore trouble but was not derailed or found lacking. Even now, she did not hurry the child from her mother’s side, only stroked her matted hair for several silent minutes then said, “I’ll be along in a little while, Lula. You rest now.”

“What shall become of her? What can we do?” Mary asked quietly. Once she would have been confident in whatever she herself devised for the child but that certainty had fled; now she was glad there was Charlotte to turn to, who could understand the child, Lula, in a way Mary knew she could not, for all that she was a widow and orphan, the mother of a child who had never breathed.

“She’s alive. We’ll keep her alive and I’ll talk to some of the women, see if anyone knows about a relative,” Charlotte said.

“And if none can be found? If she is all alone?” Mary pressed, at least knowing not to count on the appearance of an old auntie or a sister who’d been sold off and was now at the camp herself. What Samuel had wrought for Aurelia was a miracle and she did not expect there could be another one like it.

“Then I suppose we must try to send her to Boston, to the Freedman’s Society and you might write them to find her a family, a school, someplace to live. And I’d write her a letter about this, how hard her mother worked to get her here and how she only left her for the Lord when it was clear she was safe. I’d write her mother’s name so she’d have that to keep,” Charlotte replied. 

“I had hoped,” Mary began and then stopped. She had had a child’s hope and a child’s wish that someone would come and make this world right; she was a woman and she should have known better. She had thought what she described in her letters, choosing her words with great care, to convey the need and misery, the potential and the grace of these people, was accurate but she had rendered only the skimming, shallow waters of each and Charlotte had grasped the depth and what was within.

“Yes. You did. And that was something, wasn’t it? I shouldn’t be here without your hope and now I must work. There’s not time to waste, especially if none of the doctors are going to join us,” Charlotte said, sounding a little tired and so much wiser than Mary could be. Jed hadn’t come, he hadn’t said he would but after their last conversation, she’d hoped about that too; she held the sad weight of his avoidance, his dismissal and it didn’t seem there would be anything to lift it. But Charlotte had not been entirely correct.

“Samuel, I think you’ll find he’s quite the next best thing to a doctor trained. He was a doctor’s apprentice, in Philadelphia, and he is very skilled, he assists Dr. Foster and helped Dr. Summers. He’s very strong—he’s going to be leaving soon, but even for a little while, I think he would be a great help. And I shall come back after supper, I’ll come every day.”

“Then, we are begun. ‘In all labor, there is profit,’ and we will wrest such bounty as we can from what’s before us,” Charlotte said, giving Mary the first real smile she had seen the freedwoman had arrived. Mary wanted to smile in return but a strange pain took her, so she only nodded.


	7. “I do not need a doctor”

Her head had been aching terribly for hours and she could not ignore it any longer. Jed’s words “I’ve thought for many days about our conversation” seemed to batter her brain from within and she could not recall having an untroubled night’s sleep since they had argued so bitterly. He had looked at her just now with those dark eyes, beseeching her in every way and it had all hurt; his tone, his expression, the way he reached for her and the way he let his hand fall away. She had been abrupt, cruel even, with her brief rejection, “I do not need a doctor,” her mind jumbled with the images of Mattie and Lula, the small, stillborn son Mattie had delivered in her delirium and never seen, Johnny Cartwright dying in her arms, calling her “mother,” the nameless numberless many who had needed a doctor and hadn’t had such a fine physician offering any service. What she needed—she couldn’t even tell, except for her shawl, for she was so cold and her cough came more and more violently, as if her soul struggled against her body, her stays loose around her ribs, her chest heavy and tight.

“Maybe ‘cause nobody was lookin’” Samuel had said and then the memory of her own voice, “we should be safe,” a fool’s voice, smug and certain about her own righteousness. She had berated Jed for not looking, for looking but not seeing, seeing without acting but she was worse, for she had said it all and not done so herself. She had congratulated herself so often that what she did was right, as if it could quiet the small voice within her that doubted. Who was she now?

She stood in front of the small looking glass. It was hard to appreciate whatever differences there might be in her face, she knew it so well and yet not at all. Without thinking, she began to unbutton her bodice, revealing the chemise below, the sharp edge of her buckram stays; here the change was unequivocal, the blotches truly the soft rose-pink they were named for, too many to attribute to anything other than typhoid. She let her hand rest against her skin and closed her eyes against the sense of consuming failure, a chilly dread. She was worth nothing now to Mansion House, a nurse who couldn’t nurse but could only sicken, a burden heaped upon a back nearly broken. She could offer nothing but she felt she could accept nothing either, that whatever was given to her would be taken from the boys in their beds, the contraband Charlotte tended in their rude refuge. Who was there to turn to? _Samuel_ , her sluggish mind supplied, her first friend here and perhaps the truest, despite the gulf between them, but to risk contagion? It could mean his death when a full, happy life beckoned and she could not see how she could repay his friendship so harshly. She was adrift, unable to face a departure, the days of travel home to her own family, the loss of everyone dear to her in Alexandria, equally repelled by the prospect of remaining as a patient. She must at least tell someone why she had withdrawn to her room—perhaps one of the nuns would pass by and she could rouse herself to say a few words. She could feel the bed behind her and its pull; should she rise from it? Heart-broken, alone, unsure of her purpose—should she wish to? There was a knock at the door. She walked over to open it, her shawl loose around her shoulders, the folds concealing her bodice still undone.

“Oh,” she said, seeing Jed before her, appearing to her altered vision to loom in the doorway. She would have said something, told him to leave, that she was ill but he spoke.

“Mary, I know you said it was too late, but it can’t be,” he began, looking only at her face but his tone grew uncertain taking in her expression, her mouth tightened against the headache, and then her shawl slipped from her grasp. “Dear God! Mary—you’re ill, why didn’t you say?”

He stepped closer and she thought she should step back, that she still loved him despite everything she had said and she wouldn’t risk his health but her feet didn’t obey. He stretched out a hand to her arm, bare under the wool shawl and she felt sick and faint; then he was there, as close as she had wanted him even though it was wrong, his broadcloth coat against her cheek, his face above hers as if he would kiss her again and she heard only,

“Mary, dearest…” before the darkness of his eyes spread everywhere and she shut her own against the oblivion filling the world.


End file.
